I am so with them on that.
As I said last week, I was struggling with the premarriage course, but decided to reserve judgement until the end. I was right - it turned out better than I thought. Here is the lowdown....
This is what I wrote after the first installment of the course: (putting it in red so you can feel the fury)
Eeeeeeeek. It was damn difficult to spend an entire weekend focusing on our relationship! It left me feeling like our relationship has been put under a huge magnifying glass and taken apart by strict-looking, purist scientists. Some of the discussions went like this: in some homes, people have different cloths for the floor and the dishes, whereas in other homes, people just clean up a mess on the floor with the closest dishcloth. Which one do you usually use and what do you expect your partner to do? Then filling in exercises about the rules (like aforementioned one) that your parents had in their home.
Pause, please.
Rules? RULES??? People have rules in their marriages? AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!
As you can see, I wasn't very positive. I also don't respond very well to structure (as I now know), so the rigid hours - starting at 9am sharp, having only 10 minute coffee breaks and about 3 seconds of lunch - did not go down well. But then a few things occurred to me. A few surprising, important things.
1.) We made two lovely friends on the course. It's another couple who loves blogging, computer games and wedding planning. (please tick off 'making friends' for this week).
2.) Besides the dishcloth issue, we revealed some serious stuff about ourselves to each other. Necessary stuff, but in a safe environment. (When the dishcloth thing came up, we just gave each other a confused sideways glance: 'nearest cloth okay?' - 'totally')
3.) The fact that the couples who were presenting doesn't have divorced parents, doesn't make them perfect or naive, it just means they have less trouble believing.
4.) Some of them actually have divorced parents.
5.) Every single couple in that room will be there to pray for us when we someday need it, and I'm sure we will, because most couples do.
6.) God and praying suddenly starts making a lot of sense when you realize that in fact no matter what we promise or do, we can't guarantee anything. We can only trust God.
I gathered some useful info from some of my married colleagues as well:
Maret: "We didn't do a course, we went to the dominee. He said that we must remember there are different things that make a woman and a man feel loved: Men want to know that you trust him with your life, that you respect his opinion. Women want to feel safe and loved. Remember that and you should be fine."
Saafia: "When I went to the molenaar before I got married for my 'coaching', I was very negative. I thought he was going to give me the whole obedient wife spin that muslim women have to know. But it was lovely. He said 'Saafia, don't worry. Just remember if you want to paint the house blue, you can't just paint it blue. You must discuss it with your husband first. And that's true for most of the rest, too.'"
So last night we cooked pasta for our new friends from the course (also made quick emergency trip to get pizza after fiance had an unfortunate run-in with the pasta), ate chocolate, drank wine, and thanked God that we have this wonderful life where we can eat, pray and love all in our very own home.
Amen!
PS: A picture of Oprah for you. Not that I think you don't know what she looks like. But guess what? This picture was taken at the cakemaker's. Oprah's had a cake made at our cakemaker!! AAAHHH! I share a cakemaker with OPRAH!!!! It is very, very cool. Very!!!!!! I must remember to ask Jackie (that's the wife of Charly from Charly's Bakery) the story behind it. Apologies to everyone who thinks this is very superficial. I am sorry, and I promise I did not know this when I chose the cakemaker (and would not choose a cakemaker on this basis), but I am v, v big fan and I .... AAAHHHHH!!!!! .... can't believe it.
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